The soul of the state: the question of constitutional identity in Carl Schmitt’s Verfassungslehre

This chapter revisits Carl Schmitt’s argument about constitutional identity. By excavating Schmitt’s material conception of constitutional law, I chart the path of affective constitutionalism in the interwar period of the twentieth century. To facilitate the task of relating mind to matter, I bring to bear insights from Raymond Williams, the literary theorist, and develop an argument about constitutions as ’structures of feeling’. By making this approach to materiality usable for thinking about the affective life of constitutions, I hope to bring phenomenology – the philosophy of experience – to the study of constitutional law.